At shovel distance, it starts to attain a character you can come to terms with. If that is a metaphor for this stricken city, then not all is lost.

This morning I volunteer to do some shovelling down at Beckenham Primary School, south of the city centre just below the Port Hills. I arrive at 9.00am with shovel and spade, and a touch of apprehension. I am told to ask for the school caretaker. A man is wandering around protectively. I ask if he is the caretaker. No, he is a board member: “Do I look like the caretaker?” I say he does. He takes it as a compliment. We are off and running. So are the kids. There must be 100 of us, young and old, shovelling. And we are having a good time. Because we are doing something. We are grouping, uniting, summoning our resolve. We comment on that. It is a catharsis. We shall not be daunted. Especially Rachel, another board member whom we instinctively look to. We all have to look to someone. Funny thing, leadership – uniquely individual. But it’s there in spades all around me (puns are being granted special licence today).

Liquefaction comes in three grades. When it spreads across the asphalt, it is almost normal black sand, West Coast style. Not unpleasant – easy to dig up. Grade A.

Grade B is wetter, and heavier, closer to clay. You only fill half a wheelbarrow and leave it to the younger ones to cart away. Onto the streets, that is, for collection next week. We dig channels between the mounds and the kerb, so water can run by when it rains. Eastern Terrace, down by the Heathcote River, is closed. Lateral spreading – you will know by now what that means. Too much water lying around won’t help.

Grade C is the least charming. It is sludge, and hard to get up. We are ankle deep in it by the tree outside the junior school, and suddenly a distinct odour arises. We clear the kids away. The imperative is to avoid dysentery among the young.

We work hard – men, women and children – between aftershocks. Not much is spoken. No elaborate introductions – I am Ken from Ilam, from the western suburbs, the best introduction a stranger can have.

The Herald on Sunday people appear. They photograph the kids and they interview Rachel. Then they leave as fast as they arrive – no time to extend a helping arm. A helicopter hovers above – no time to look up, and no point, really. It will be the Minister.

Tomorrow I have arranged for a Green group to be attached to Sam Johnson’s Student Army. It is not just young shovellers that are valued in this brave new world – it is the elders who can door-knock and listen to, and counsel, the traumatised. We have more than a few of this ilk, and so our Green numbers will be significant. The students are pleased; they have taken the initiative. So are the elders; they are responding to the call of youth. I now know we shall get to the anointed place. It will take time, and it is purgatorial, but it is no longer Hell while we are shovelling, at least where there is no death. We shall get there.

We exchange stories before we get down to business. One of us was close to the crushed buses. She went to mount a step but the step kept moving away. In the end she gave up and went back into the street, knowing it was the earthquake-to-end-all.

We agree to set up a tiered communications structure to contact all Canterbury Green members and see how they all are. We fly into action Friday morning. By late afternoon all Ilam members have been contacted, and it produces the first fruit. One member is living inside the cordon with no water, power or sanitation. She needs to live elsewhere. As she cheerfully put it, “it is easier this time, because at least I know my house will be condemned.” Another member is leaving the city and offers her home. I pick our inner city colleague up at the cordon and take her to the Papanui house. They bond and occupancy is exchanged.

I share the concern of another member over the confused messages being circulated to the public about sanitation. Wednesday we are all advised to bury our human waste in the garden. No problem – it’s like camping, at least for a while. But Thursday the message is, if you have water pressure, you may flush your toilets – “use sparingly”. That appears to be an anatomical anomaly but who’s worrying? Well I am. It’s one thing to flush in the western suburbs and confirm that everything is working wonderfully in your section and your street. It’s another to wonder where the glorious product heads. Answer: it heads east. I enquire with Civil Defence. Yes, they reply, most of it will end up in the Avon “but we have to put up with that for a while”. I beg to differ. Surely we can make a distinction between the elderly and infirm, and the able-bodied who can continue with their garden escapades. Maybe, they say, we’ll give that thought. But I then wonder whether there is a sanitation threshold for gardens, if you get my delicate drift. He is not sure. I am not reassured. A strange mixture down here between high professionalism and casual risk-taking.

Minister Brownlee has just assured us on air that liquefaction is not a bad thing. I suppose I know where he is coming from, but I wonder whether our eastern suburb residents agree with him.

I am contacted by a young Green leader who has a small army of 40 volunteers ready to go but not the authorisation to be in the field. I call Sam Johnson, the student leader with an army of maybe 1,000, who has authorised capacity to be in the field. I link them up and Sam has 40 more – 41 if I am allowed to risk my back. I aim to do so.

Bruce Tulloch and I drive through the eastern suburbs and witness the liquefaction. We drive up the Port Hills and witness the damaged houses. We enter one – owned by Bruce’s nephew. Every brick has sheered off the exterior walls. Its front is cracked open from the rest of the house. EQC advice is not to stand in front of it. They show the resilience that you can only admire. We visit the deputy chief of the fire dept. Showing inexhaustible energy through the exhaustion, he tells us of experiences I cannot retell. But the searing story on radio of the two men repairing the organ at Durham St Methodist Church is too much. That was the church I spoke of yesterday – two doors from my office. When I peered into my office window yesterday, I now assume they were lying there still.
It is time for tears, but they do not come.

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

One Way to Free the World From War (MP3 and OGG)

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For the last week or so since the NZAID shake-up story broke in the NZ Herald Mr McCully has been flitting around Europe. During the time Mr McCully was probably scoffing hors d’ouvres in Paris it has come to light that a $1.95 million a year Pacific aid programme which supports villages across the Pacific in areas like natural resource management has been canned.

While programs devoted to natural resource management get the chop the Government has found millions of dollars to keep Pacific tourism links going – links which the Prime Minister told journalists earlier this week could very well be coming from NZAID’s already tight budget. Now, I enjoy a pacific blue-lagoon-style holiday just like the next amphibian, and maybe we should be assisting our Pacific pals’ tourism industries – but should NZAID’s budget be going to Air New Zealand. This seems a little stingy to this frog and has led our Green Party MP Dr Kennedy Graham to call for some answers from the Minister.

In these tough economic times our Foreign Minister should perhaps heed the advice of the Christian World Service and keep up our commitment to the world’s poorest. This advice also comes from an organisation Mr McCully’s pals from the 1990s were always willing to follow the – International Monetary Fund.